What’s On

Looking Deep into Nature

Peter Partington SWLA (1941-2025)
Painter – Printer – Sculptor Teacher – Lover Of Mother Nature

This unique exhibition is a celebration of the remarkable life and work of Peter Partington SWLA.

Peter spent his life observing and sharing our living world, bringing birds and animals to life in their habitats and seasons. He sketched in the field and created pictures, sculptures and prints with an incredible touch of the eye and hand.

Peter showed work in Nature in Art’s Inaugural 1985 exhibition, the year he was elected to the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) on whose council he served some years later. In 1989 he was Nature in Art’s very first artist in residence and one of the first to donate work to the collection. He was a valued friend and encourager of Nature in Art until his death early in 2025. He leaves a prolific output with thousands of painting’s across UK homes and many inspired people who experienced his live teaching and conversations.

This show will feature Peter’s studio, diverse works and some not previously displayed in public from private and public collections. All tell the story of a man who lived life to the full and from the heart, and inspired others to do the same. Peter’s legacy will live on, not just through his own work, but through the work of countless others who were encouraged and enabled through him.

A printmaker, painter and sculptor, it is hard to know which he enjoyed the most, and, site unseen, a parallel body of abstract art, many 3D as well as experiments in colour and form. This show includes some of these so one can see these creative steams feeding his capability across all the works. As one commentator said ‘His art was in every inch, his personality. His personality was in every inch, his art.’

Peter expressed himself through his art, which was widely published in books, print runs, ‘How to Draw’ guides, online videos and magazines, numerous local and professional exhibitions, poetry too and his ‘natural illustrator’ to bring life to other writers. His compulsion to venture into the great outdoors to watch birds (sometimes worryingly from his moving car too!) meant he could draw from memory and describe their behaviours in his art.

Small wonder that his studio groaned under the weight of thousands of works, most finished and many in states of re-work. This exhibition will sing out his enthusiasm and represent this unique English master artist, generous to a tee with his support and engagement with the public.

The show is accompanied by a new book ‘Peter Partington ‘The Artists Anthology’ by his son Jerome Partington, which includes many of the exhibition, to raise funds for a SWLA nature art school programme, Nature in Art and his conservation charities.

There also is a FREE special launch event on September 29th 3.30pm – 6.30pm. ALL WELCOME.

If possible please book here

Wild

Cotswold Craftsmen at Nature in Art

Bringing together a wonderfully diverse range of disciplines, this selling exhibition will showcase the breadth and individuality of contemporary craft. Visitors can discover printmaking, jewellery, wirework, textiles, willow work, sculpture, painting, resin art and more, with each maker offering their own interpretation of the wild world around us.

From ancient woodland forms and botanical structures to animals, landscapes and the textures and materials found in nature, Wild celebrates the endless ways the natural world can spark creativity, whilst offering a glimpse into the rich and varied work of the Cotswold Craftsmen, whose members create thoughtfully made work across a remarkable range of traditional and contemporary disciplines.

As part of a local environmental week, Nature in Art is showing a selection of paintings by Meg Stevens that are part of Nature in Art’s collection and were last shown in their entirety in 2017.
They are from a remarkable collection of paintings all done in situ by Meg Stevens in and around the Brecons, where she lived. She could be found out in all weather capturing the wild places she loved. These pictures in particular, highlight the flowers in their habitat.
In talking about the series, Meg said: ‘When I find bits (of land) where wild flowers grow plentifully, I want to celebrate. All art makes a statement of some kind about something experienced, emotionally or physically. It may be a proclamation or a protest, a poem or a political statement. I think mine are a sort of celebration’.
However, capturing those celebrations was sometimes a struggle! Meg much preferred painting out of doors taking her equipment out into the countryside on her bicycle. She said, ‘If I find myself painting in places where I almost have to cling on with my teeth, it’s because these are often the only places left where wild flowers can grow in profusion – the way they are meant to be seen.’ Meg went on to say, ‘Every picture is a fight. It wouldn’t be worthwhile, I suppose, if it weren’t. One suffers cold, heat, stiff neck, tennis elbow. Brolly springs a leak, blows away. Easel collapses. Seeds in one’s socks and prickles in one’s pullover! …… I can’t decide if it’s me fighting to find how to say it or the picture fighting to get itself said. That they do get themselves somehow said is not a tribute to my skill but to the beauty which, in spite of all that we do to our environment, insists on breaking out wherever it finds the smallest chance.’

The Gift and Craft Fair has been held for over 20 years and is always well attended, helping to raise essential funds for the Nature in Art Trust. Here at Nature in Art we are extremely passionate about supporting local artists and craftspeople, helping to highlight the array of crafts available and the creativity of the people in the local area. Our event strives to have a large selection of stallholders showcasing a variety of crafts, from woodwork and ceramics, glassware and photography to jewellery, textiles, resin art, flower art and much more.

In 2026, it will take place on Saturday 31st October and Sunday 1st November, 10am-4pm both days.

To apply, click here

Course details:

Make a magical Christmas wreath. Start a family tradition that you can enjoy year after year. I will bring a wide selection of glass, ceramic, mirror and vintage china, so you can create a wreath to your own colour scheme – richly traditional, silver and frosty, jazzy or shabby chic! 

Materials and additional costs: 

£22 (cash) to be paid to tutor for materials 

Please bring a shoebox size cardboard box to cut tiles into. 

Suitability:

Suitable for all 

Spaces: 

10

Price: £124 / £158

Book here 

Aurora

Paintings by Nick Jones

This autumn, Nature in Art presents two galleries of paintings by Nick Jones, made between 2015 and 2020 and drawn from his long fascination with landscape, light and the far north. The museum previously exhibited Jones’s Arctic paintings in 2023, and now returns to his work with a further telling of the story — both the aurora that first drew him north, and the optical phenomena that followed.

The first gallery brings together Jones’s aurora paintings, made after a series of trips to Finnish Lapland from 2014 in search of the Northern Lights. Those who have witnessed the aurora have long reached for the language of wonder to describe it; the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen called it “colour etherealized,” writing that nothing more beautiful could exist than the Arctic night. It was in that same spirit of awe and wonder that Jones set out to paint what he saw. The results are quiet, luminous works that seek to evoke the mesmerising experience of standing beneath the aurora.

The second gallery turns to other optical phenomena of Arctic skies: halos, coronas, parhelia, fog-bows and rainbows (the last increasingly seen as rain becomes more common in a warming Arctic) formed as sunlight passes through the ice crystals, water droplets and mist that fill the polar air. Many of these paintings were made before Jones had seen such phenomena in the Arctic for himself, and developed in the studio out of a growing curiosity about the far north, and in preparation for his 2018 residency in Greenland and Baffin Island.

Across both galleries, Jones’s work traces not just what these phenomena look like but evokes something of the wonder and mystery that those lucky enough to have seen them have long described.

Nick Jones will also give a talk on 24th November, sharing more of the story behind both bodies of work. Book a ticket here

.    Nick Jones stands beneath the Northern Lights

An opportunity to view Nick Jones’s exhibition of aurora and Arctic optical phenomena paintings (7pm – 7.30pm), followed by a finger buffet, and then a talk by the artist on the stories and Arctic journeys behind the work. See information about the exhibition here.

Book your talk ticket here

We have our amazing Mini Craft Market where our talented local crafters can get together to share and sell their handmade products.

Previous crafts have included: nature crafts, paper crafts, woodwork, paintings, illustration, crochet/knitting, weaving, decoupage, cards, glass,  silk painting,  textile bags,  jewellery, resin art and flood painting.

Held in the Education Centre and is free to enter!

10am – 4:30pm (3:45pm for December Market)